Every year, industrial development projects displace about 10 million people globally. In India alone, involuntary resettlement has affected about 50 million people over the last five decades. Three-fourths of them still face an uncertain future. People displaced by such projects are prone to being rendered landless, jobless, homeless and marginalised. Yet, the policies and programmes related to their relocation and rehabilitation are yet to find satisfactory answers to questions like: Is...

Brushing aside protests from a section of landowners, a determined district administration today stepped up its land acquisition drive in Gadakujang and Nuagaon gram panchayats. Simultaneously, the authorities also worked out strategies for taking up the drive in the Dhinkia gram panchayat, the nerve-centre of anti-Posco movement. “The land acquisition process was peaceful barring a few cases where people expressed unwillingness but we managed to prevail over them,” said special land acquisition...

Proposes that the percentage of land to be acquired by state agencies should be decided by their governments. The modified Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill is likely to suggest giving state governments the power to determine their roles in acquiring land for industry. Also, in a positive for farmers, the Bill proposes that if the land remains unused for five years, it should be automatically returned to them. If sold to a third...

The rural development ministry has proposed that farmers should get 80% of the profits from resale of land bought from them for development, much higher than that suggested by a Sonia Gandhi-led panel. The National Advisory Council had pegged the compensation after resale at 25% of the profits made by private developers. The proposal, aimed at giving farmland owners a better deal, follows protests in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida last month over...

Tribal people constitute close to 50 per cent of the population that has been displaced because of "developmental" activities. “IF you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country,” Jawaharlal Nehru has been quoted as telling the village residents to be displaced by the Hirakud dam in 1948. And so it has been for the past 64 years. People, mostly impoverished tribes, have been suffering because...